October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The archbishop of Guadalajara, Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega, condemned a pro-abortion forum recently held at a local Jesuit university.

The event was held September 26 at the Jesuits’ Western Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESO) and brought together representatives from three pro-abortion organizations to speak in favor of a “right” to kill the unborn. It was variously characterized as a “forum,” a “dialogue” and a “debate,” and generated much consternation and protest from local Catholics.

The cardinal issued a response to the event on Tuesday, with the title “No to Abortion: Respect for life from its conception.”

“In recent days, in the facilities of a university of Christian inspiration, a debate was carried out headed by a non-Catholic organization that promotes abortion,” wrote Robles Ortega. “The fact, as was to be assumed and expected, caused surprise in many of the Christian faithful, and indignation in others.”

Responding to claims that the university only wished to “dialogue” with advocates of abortion, the cardinal responded: “Respect for life must not be subject to a debate, not even with the purpose of being ‘open’ or being in the ‘vanguard,’ much less because of tastes or of feelings, as if the respect for life were to depend on what some people might feel or think. Nor can it be subject to the judgment of the personal conscience alone, because the conscience must be objectively formed, and because what is in question is the life of an innocent person.”

“When this topic is discussed, and we do not accept abortion, it isn’t because of intolerance or the rejection of dialogue, but rather to be coherent with regard to the right that every person has to live, above all if it is an innocent person, which has not yet been born, a right that is not subordinate to individuals nor to parents, nor is it a concession of the society or the state.”

“Regarding the aforementioned debate, I want to clarify that I did not know about it in advance, nor was it authorized by me, as some of the faithful, in their surprise, assumed, asked about, or questioned,” wrote Robles Ortega. “Through Fr. J. Jesús García Zamora, Vicario General of this diocese, I made known my astonishment to Fr. José Morales Orozco, Rector of the ITESO, over the carrying out of the aforementioned forum in that University, and to indicate to him that I didn’t have any association with that event.”

As an institute of the Jesuit order, the ITESO is not under the daily supervision of the cardinal, who can only protest against such events. His only other alternative would be to remove the faculties of certain Jesuit priests, or to seek the expulsion of the whole order from his diocese, a difficult process that would have to be approved by Rome.

Although the ITESO itself has not responded, a former rector of the school, Jorge Morales, told the Guadalajara newspaper Mural that he continues to support the school’s “position in favor of a free dialogue” despite the cardinal’s denunciation.

As LifeSite has documented in several previous articles, the Jesuit order in Mexico has been repeatedly involved in direct pro-abortion activism, primarily through a “human rights” organization called the “Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Center for Human Rights” (PRODH). The center is a participant in the “All Rights for Everyone Network” (Red Todos los Derechos para Todas y Todos, which includes the pro-abortion “Catholic” front group “Catholics for the Right to Decide” and other pro-abortion organizations.

Attempts to fundraise for PRODH in the Canadian archdiocese of Ottawa in 2011 led to the cancellation of the scheduled fundraising events by Archbishop Terrence Prendergast when the Archdiocese of Mexico City contacted the archbishop to warn him of the organization’s pro-abortion stance, and LifeSite published an exposé on the organization’s pro-abortion ties. PRODH’s director at the time, Luis Arriaga Valenzuela, soon left the organization, which was also cut off from funding by the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CCODP).

Robles Ortega reiterates Catholic doctrine on the inviolability of human life in the womb

Cardinal Robles Ortega noted that the event offered an opportunity to restate the Catholic Church’s teaching on the sanctity of human life.

“This event permits me to recall – and to ratify – the posture and the doctrine of the Church regarding the defense of human life, from its conception until its natural death, and the rejection of abortion,” wrote the cardinal.

“Our position as believers is based both in the Sacred Scripture and in the Magisterium of the Church, as well as in the natural law and in what science has demonstrated regarding the beginning of the existence of a human being.

“Serious scientific studies prove the existence of a life, of a distinct person, from the moment of its conception. They indicate that a human being is a unique genetic individual, which is not reproducible. Its biological identity is determined at the beginning of its life, conception.

“Sacred Scripture specifies what the fifth commandment prohibits: ‘Do not take away the life of the innocent and the just’ (Ex. 23:7). Therefore, human life must be respected and protected in an absolute way from the moment of conception, its rights as a person being recognized, among which is the inviolable right of every innocent person to life, which also constitutes a constitutive element of the society and its legislation. The Church has affirmed the moral malice of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed; it remains unchanging.”

To make your concerns respectfully known to the Jesuit University of Guadalajara:

Over 40 nations unite spiritually on Sunday to pray the rosary for Our Lady’s help in fighting evil

PINE BLUFF, Wisconsin, October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Catholics in more than 40 countries across the world will unite this Sunday to fight the forces of evil prowling the earth and the Church by praying the rosary.

An effort that began as a U.S. response to Poland’s flourishingRosary at the Borders last fall has gone global with rosary rallies planned worldwide in what organizers are calling a “clarion call of the Immaculata.”

The term Immaculata derives from the word immaculate, which in Catholic theology means free from sin, also denoting the Virgin Mary and the Immaculate Conception.

Citing the myriad social ills that have befallen the culture in the U.S. and the world – including sexual hedonism, abortion, divorce, pornography and drug use – the rosary effort recalls Our Lady’s appearances throughout history, where she predicted the societal decay and called for Catholics to pray in reparation.

Casualties often go unseen in this war with no borders, the initiative’s information also says, but very few are left unwounded.

“The enemies encamped against us seek to rob us of our dignity – the essential dignity of the human person, being made in the image and likeness of God,” it states.

“What was once done in darkness is now celebrated in the light,” the rosary organizers continue. “Yet, where before we may have been blinded, God’s unfathomable mercy is opening the hearts, the minds and the eyes of people of Faith. Our Lady’s Clarion Call – the call once trumpeted at Quito, LaSalette, Fatima, Tre Fontane and Akita — is upon us.”

Earlier this year, Catholics in the United States were invitedto pray the 54-day Novena for Our Nation from the Feast of the Assumption on August 15 through the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7, concluding with the Rosary Coast to Coast. It was the second such effort involving the novena culminating with the rosary rally on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Catholics across the world have initiated several rosary rallies after Poland’s successful rosary crusade last October 7, with more than a million Polish Catholics encircling their country with prayer.

“We, in the United States, share the conviction, now seen and acted upon in the international community, to enter fully into the spiritual warfare we are facing and to pray for our respective nations at this watershed moment in history,” the Rosary Coast to Coast site states.

Since July, Catholics in more than 40 nations, including churches in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia, have united with the U.S. Rosary Coast to Coast initiative to pray the rosary for their respective countries.

Pope St. Pius V founded the original Holy League in response to the grim state of Christian Europe in 1571. It consisted of small groups of Catholic men and armies from various Catholic European nations.

Under the spiritual leadership of Pius V and the military leadership of Don John of Austria, through praying the rosary and fasting the Holy League implored the Lord’s grace and assistance through the intercession of the Blessed Mother. By God’s grace, on October 7, 1571, at the Battle of Lepanto, the Christian fleet won a huge victory, saving both Christendom and western civilization.

The Battle of Lepanto and the Holy League endure hundreds of years later as effective reminders of the power of praying the rosary and Catholics uniting in prayer for Our Lady’s intercession.

The New Holy League of Nations is sponsoring the 54-day novena and Rosary Coast to Coast, it said, because the Church finds itself in a similar situation to that of the Church in the late 16th century.

“However, instead of a physical enemy on the horizon,” it states, “the Church and the family (the domestic Church) are threatened daily by relativism, secularism, impurity, and confusion regarding Church teaching.”

International organizers of Sunday’s rosary rally encourage participants to live-stream their respective rosary gatherings through Facebook Live, or through the Periscope App, with the hashtag #RosaryCoastToCoast and #HolyLeagueOfNations.

Photos and video may be similarly tagged on all social media sites as well.

U.S. rosaries are encouraged to take place simultaneously this Sunday, October 7, 2018, at 4 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Central, 2 p.m. Mountain and 1 p.m. Pacific.

The National Rosary Rally will take place in front of the U.S. Capitol on Sunday. It begins with Mass at St. Peter’s on Capitol Hill, followed by a rosary procession to the rally site. The National Rosary Rally will be live-streamed.

Organizers note that Pope Francis recently exhorted the faithful to pray the rosary throughout October, along with the St. Michael the Archangel prayer, “to protect the Church from the devil.”

“Answering this papal exhortation,” they say, “coordinators in Italy have announced that a Rosary Rally will be held, in St Peter’s Square, October 7. Organizers are asking those who wish to join to meet at the obelisk in the middle of the square at 3 p.m. to unite in prayer with the world.”

Canadian universities allow men identifying as ‘female’ to compete against women in sports

RICHMOND HILL, Ontario, October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A sporting organization governing university sports on the majority of Canadian university campuses has approved a new policy allowing biological males who identify as “female” to compete against real females.

“Effective immediately, U SPORTS student-athletes will be eligible to compete on the team that corresponds with either their sex assigned at birth or their gender identity,” states U Sports' September 26 “inclusive” transgender policy.

The policy makes it clear that men only need to identify as a “female,” without surgery or hormones, to compete on a women's team.

“U SPORTS’ approved policy does not require student-athletes to undertake hormone therapy in order for them to compete in the gender category that is consistent with their gender identity,” the policy states.

Gwendolyn Landolt, national vice-president and legal counsel for Real Women of Canada, said that the policy defies all common sense and will leave female athletes squaring off against biologically-male opponents who will have a physiological advantage.

Young women are going to be crowded out of university sports by men who identify as “women” and are now allowed to join women's teams on most Canadian university campuses, she said in an interview.

"It's mindless. What they're doing is ending competitive sports," said Landolt. "There is no way that men and women are equal physically.

"It's not just muscle mass. Men's hearts are bigger. Their respiratory system is different. Their bodies are constituted differently - and that's the bottom line," she said.

The policy appears to be turning a blind eye to the likely advantages high testosterone levels in men who identify as “women” will have on their ability to compete against women. The policy does not consider that biological men with normal levels of testosterone may have greater muscle mass as a result.

"The hormone suppression treatment that is required in some transgender policies - but is not required in U Sports’ transgender policy - does not relate to, deal with, or control, muscle mass," claimed U Sports' senior manager of marketing and communications Ken Saint Eloy.

The U Sports spokesman also said the organization decided not to require that transgendered athletes be on hormone therapy based on a document from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports.

"That guidance document, written by an expert working group made up of Canada’s top subject matter experts in this area, concluded that transgender policies that do require surgery or hormone treatment are not supported by direct scientific evidence that hormone levels significantly and consistently impact athletic performance," said Eloy.

But, according to Landolt, the transgender community is trying to convince Canadians to suspend all common sense and accept something she says is unreasonable.

"It's ludicrous to think that men and women are physically the same," she said. "No-one should go along with this even if it offends the feelings of the transgendered."

The Real Women vice-president is also warning young female athletes who identify as “men” to stay clear of trying to compete against real males on the football field or other contact sports.

"She'll be killed," said Landolt. "She can try but she'll never succeed."

Landolt encouraged female athletes on university campuses to oppose the policy.

"I would object to the sports department of the universities and start petitions and letters going," she said. "This is preposterous and completely unacceptable."

October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Notre Dame alumni are calling on the prominent Catholic university to rescind an honorary degree awarded in 2008 to accused abuser now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. They are also calling for the university to support an investigation into how McCarrick was able to rise to prominence in the Catholic Church while simultaneously preying upon young men.

“We, the undersigned alumni, members of the Notre Dame community, friends of Notre Dame, and concerned Catholics, urge you to rescind the honorary degree the University awarded in 2008 to then Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and to announce the University’s support for a wide-ranging and unconstrained investigation into what McCarrick did, who knew, and what they did or didn’t do about it,” states a petition addressed to Notre Dame President Father John Jenkins.

“Former Cardinal McCarrick is at the epicenter of the most serious crisis faced by the Catholic Church in the United States in a very long time. He has become the face of clerical sexual abuse,” the petition, created by the alumni group Sycamore Trust, adds.

The alumni group’s petition comes in the wake of the credible allegations that McCarrick abused a minor decades ago. These were followed by subsequent charges that McCarrick was a serial predator of seminarians and young priests – and further that this was a well-known “secret’ in the Church and some media.

Sycamore Trust notes how Notre Dame pulled Bill Cosby’s honorary degree the day a jury found him guilty of abusing a woman, and says the school’s reputation as a Catholic institution is at risk since six other prominent Catholic colleges and universities have rescinded the degrees they’d given McCarrick.

At the same time, Holy Cross Father Bill Miscamble, longtime Notre Dame history professor and the University’s prior History Department chair, has penned a column for the Irish Rover in which he calls Notre Dame’s response to the Church’s sexual abuse scandal “tepid.”

He writes:

Fr. John Jenkins has even declined to rescind the honorary degree granted to McCarrick in 2008 claiming that the university must “allow the adjudicatory process to reach a conclusion before taking action.” He has maintained this stance despite the fact that Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s Review Board determined that McCarrick had molested an altar boy, and that two New Jersey dioceses paid secret settlements to buy the silence of two adult male victims of McCarrick’s sexual molestation. McCarrick’s perfidy is hardly in dispute as confirmed by Pope Francis’s dismissal of him from the College of Cardinals. Other universities like Fordham, CUA and the University of Portland already have dissociated themselves from him.

Miscamble notes that Notre Dame’s “difficulty in dissociating itself from McCarrick is complicated by the extent to which the university’s leadership embraced members of the former cardinal’s network and their agenda.”

Withdrawing McCarrick’s honorary degree is just the first step, Miscamble writes, then detailing specifics of additional action the University should take to be part of seeking the truth in the McCarrick scandal, and “to overcome the taint that the university’s close association with the former cardinal has left.”

“If it turns out that Cardinals Wuerl and Farrell were aware of McCarrick’s abhorrent behavior and did nothing to stop it, then their degrees too should be rescinded,” he wrote.

“Notre Dame might also put some distance between itself and those members of the hierarchy closely associated with McCarrick until matters regarding him and them have been fully investigated. And bishops such as Roger Mahony should be discouraged from further visits to the campus or associations with Notre Dame,” he continued.

“Beyond these initial moves, Notre Dame should commit itself to the pursuit of the truth without fear or favor,” added.

Note: Follow LifeSite's new Catholic twitter account to stay up to date on all Church-related news. Click here: @LSNCatholic

DECATUR, Georgia (Alliance Defending Freedom) – The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (DOE OCR) has announced that it will investigate a complaint that Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys, along with a local family law attorney, filed against the City Schools of Decatur on behalf of a kindergartener who was sexually assaulted in her school bathroom.

“This situation was both deeply tragic and avoidable,” said ADF legal counsel Christiana Holcomb. “Schools have a duty to protect the privacy and safety of all students and Decatur Schools clearly failed this young girl. The current approach that many schools are taking of passing these transgender bathroom policies isn’t working; they fail to provide basic privacy or ensure the safety of all students.”

According to the complaint filed May 22, Superintendent David Dude announced to staff “a policy that required all Decatur Schools to admit boys who identify as female into girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, and shower areas on school premises (…) based solely on the stated preference of the individual student.”

After the adoption of the policy, the complaint notes, “Superintendent Dude and the Board were repeatedly warned through written statements and public comment that the Policy would unacceptably inflict the loss of privacy and loss of safe private spaces for girls.” The school district made no changes to the policy and, in November 2017, a boy was permitted — because of the policy — to enter the girls’ restroom, where he assaulted the girl, known by the initials “N.T.”

The DOE OCR enforces Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal assistance. The agency is investigating whether the school district failed to provide a prompt response to a report that N.T. was sexually assaulted, whether the implementation of this policy contributed to creating a hostile environment for the student and other girls in noncompliance with Title IX, and whether the district retaliated against the student’s parent for reporting the sexual harassment.

The school refused to change or alter its policy, forcing the mother to remove her daughter from the school for her emotional and physical safety.

“A school’s top priority is to protect the safety and bodily privacy of its students, period,” said ADF-allied attorney Vernadette Broyles with the Georgia Adoption & Family Law Practice, who co-filed the complaint with ADF. “Decatur School’s policies have created a stressful, unfair, and, as in this case, even unsafe environment — particularly for girls. We are grateful that OCR is investigating this tragedy, and we hope the agency helps this school district and others adopt common-sense solutions that protect the privacy and safety of all students.”

Broyles is among the nearly 3,200 attorneys allied with ADF and serves as local counsel for the student and her family.

October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Former Planned Parenthood president and CEO Cecile Richards is back in the public spotlight, this time lending her name to the effort to oust pro-life Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Fire Ted Cruz PAC (FTC PAC) released the minute-long video on Tuesday, in which the 12-year abortion industry chief urges Texans to replace Cruz with Democrat challenger Robert “Beto” O’Rourke.

“I was born in Waco, Texas, all my family lives in Texas, and I care about what happens to folks in Texas and particularly women in Texas,” begins Richards, who lives in New York City. As Planned Parenthood’s leader, she claims she “saw firsthand what happens when politicians put their own ideological agenda ahead of the health and well being of women and young people.”

“And frankly, that’s what Ted Cruz has done his entire political career,” Richards continues. “He’s been one of the leaders in the fight to defund Planned Parenthood and block access to affordable health care for thousands and thousands of women in Texas.”

What Richards cites as Cruz’s negatives are the very qualities pro-lifers like most about the former presidential candidate, however. He infamously urged his fellow Republicans to withhold funding for Obamacare and Planned Parenthood during the appropriations process rather than send pro-abortion budgets to Barack Obama,

“We have a chance to really change the direction in Texas and elect a senator that cares about all Texans,” Richards concluded, alluding to O’Rourke. “And so I hope you’ll do whatever you can financially to support the effort to fire Ted Cruz.” The Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL have both endorsed O’Rourke, who is campaigning on “access to safe and legal abortion services” as well as to “birth control and emergency contraception,” and on taxpayer funding of so-called “family planning centers” such as Planned Parenthood.

Led by Dallas trial lawyer Marc Stanley, FTC PAC has spent $15,000 so far to oust Cruz. The Daily Callernotes that its involvement in the race runs counter to O’Rourke’s public claims that he doesn’t want political action committees’ intervention.

Richards, who resigned in January and has been succeeded by Baltimore Health Commissioner Leana Wen, led a Planned Parenthood that pro-lifers say was far from the health champion her latest video suggests.

Richards presided over the abortions of an estimated 3.5 million preborn babies, and has consistently rejected any acknowledgement of their scientifically-established humanity. In 2014, she said the question of when life begins was not “really relevant” to discussing abortion, and this April she falsely claimed there was “no specific moment when life begins.”

Cruz is currently leading O'Rourke by 4.5 points, according to RealClearPolitics' polling average. A Democrat victory in the deep-red state of Texas would be a major upset to the GOP, and a major boon to Democrats' efforts to retake the narrowly-divided Senate.

Update Oct. 4, 6:15 PM: Since LifeSiteNews published this story, the name on Twitter account @jordan_hunt18 has been changed to Jordan C*nt and is a declared "satire account."

TORONTO, October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A Twitter account alleged to be that of Jordan Hunt, the man identified on a viral video as attacking a pro-life woman in Toronto on Sunday, is fake.

The user behind Twitter account @jordan_hunt18 has created a media firestorm by refusing to apologize for the violent incident, taking swipes at pro-lifers, and comparing himself to Gandhi.

But it wasn’t Hunt, a Toronto hairstylist who lost his job after he was identified on the internet, who was doing the tweeting.

LifeSiteNews has confirmed using google cache that the account was originally called @BLUEWAV94011533.

BlueWav, who is from California and describes himself in his original account as “Political junkie - Bernie supporter - idiots will be blocked,” revamped the account so slickly it seemed genuine to many.

Indeed, “Hunt’s” alleged tweets were quoted unquestioningly in an article by Canada’s CTV News and provoked outrage and censure from conservatives and liberals across social media.

They were obviously designed to inflame an already fraught situation, as for example this:

I will NOT apologize for defending women’s right to choose. Even to a woman. #TheResistance

‘Wear Gray’ campaign encourages repentance for clerical sexual sins

OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi, October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A grassroots movement is encouraging Catholic laity to be a good example to the clergy by wearing a modern form of sackcloth and ashes.

Lay women Lori Carter and Julie Holden have founded the “Wear Gray” movement, hoping to inspire Catholics to fast, pray, and wear penitential gray clothing to church in reparation for the sins of clerical sexual abuse and cover-up.

They take inspiration from the Ven. Fulton Sheen’s admonition to the laity not to expect the clergy to save the Catholic Church: “Who is going to save our Church? Do not look to the priests. Do not look to the bishops. It’s up to you, the laity, to remind our priests to be priests, and our bishops to be bishops.”

In an introductory letter, Carter and Holden explain that their grassroots movement is born of a “deep desire to bring our church back to what is holy and sacred.” They ask that priests, bishops, and cardinals “humbly offer honest reparation for the sins of the church,” act to bring criminals to “swift justice,” and support victims, the laity, and members of religious orders.

The scriptural underpinnings of their movement are supplied by the Book of Jonah. In the story of Jonah’s mission to Nineveh, the prophet warns the great city that God will destroy it in 40 days. In response, the people themselves proclaim a fast and wear sackcloth. The king and his nobles then do the same and decree that everyone, including animals, will fast, wear sackcloth, “cry mightily to God,” and “turn from their evil ways.”

“Who knows?” the Ninevites say. “God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

As the Wear Gray organizers observe, God is moved by this “universal penance” and does not destroy the city.

“Hearing the cry of the people of Nineveh, the Lord changed the king’s and princes’ hearts and had mercy because of their universal reparation and repentance (Jonah 3: 1- 10),” they wrote.

In lieu of literal sackcloth and ashes, the organizers have hit on the idea of ordinary gray clothing as suitably penitential garments.

“Gray is the color of ashes, starkness, purgatory, and penance,” they state.

October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – November’s Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald will make “clear in what you see” that one of its main characters is homosexual, the director teased in a new interview.

During her 2007 tour for the final book of the main Harry Potter series, author J.K. Rowling told a crowd that “Dumbledore is gay, actually,” despite the elderly mentor character’s sexual attraction not being referenced in the books themselves. The bombshell earned her accolades from pro-LGBT activists but also criticism from parents concerned about exposing their kids to adult and morally-objectionable themes. Critics of the series, such as the late Vatican exorcist Father Gabriel Amorth and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, had already maintained that its subversive themes could negatively predispose children to curiousity about the occult.

The Crimes of Grindelwald, the second cinematic prequel to the novels’ film adaptations, stars Jude Law as a younger Albus Dumbledore, during the period when Rowling says he fell in love with and was ultimately heartbroken by the titular Gellert Grindelwald (played by Johnny Depp). Whether the Fantastic Beasts series would officially recognize Dumbledore’s sexuality has been a topic of ongoing speculation.

Director David Yates angered LGBT activists in January when he toldEntertainment Weekly that the film would “not explicitly” reference the subject, with the two characters’ relationship being more of an intellectual infatuation “with each other’s ideas, and ideology and each other.” Now, however, Yates is suggesting otherwise.

“This part of this huge narrative that [Rowling] is creating doesn’t focus on his sexuality, but we’re not airbrushing or hiding it,” he toldEmpire Magazine for their latest issue. “The story isn’t there in this particular movie but it’s clear in what you see [...] that he is gay. A couple of scenes we shot are very sensual moments of him and the young Grindelwald.”

Yates’ comments align with previous teases by Law and Rowling that a full exploration of Dumbledore’s homosexuality may be held for future Fantastic Beasts movies, while one of this film’s “sensual gay moments” in question appears to be a shot included in some of Crimes of Grindelwald’s marketing.

The scene (at 1:09 in the above video) features “the Mirror of Erised, an object which shows a person their heart’s truest desire,” Nick Duffy of the pro-homosexual PinkNewsexplains. In the mirror, Dumbledore sees “himself with Grindelwald looking back.”

Homosexual characters are an increasing presence in mainstream films, television, comic books, and video games, including cartoons like Adventure Time and Gravity Falls marketed at children. The pro-homosexual lobbying group GLAAD has attempted to pressure studios to introduce more homosexual superheroes, and recently launched a new award to encourage more pro-LGBT themes in video games. Entertainment giant Disney has promoted homosexuality through its parks, merchandise, and even preschool cartoons, and reportedly plans to feature its first openly-homosexual movie character in next year’s Jungle Cruise.

GLAAD’s own research, as well as comic book retailers’ revolt last year against “social justice” themes in Marvel comic books, suggests an increasing number of Americans are losing patience with unsolicited LGBT and other left-wing themes in their entertainment.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Several students at Harvard Law School have filed Title IX complaints against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, claiming the judge’s very presence on campus would constitute sexual harassment.

Just before the U.S. Senate was set to vote on President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, a trio of women – Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and Julie Swetnick – came forward to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Nevertheless, senior Jacqueline Kellogg came up with the Title IX idea and inspired several of her fellow students to do the same, the Harvard Crimsonreports. Kellogg’s efforts, including an email to students at both the college and the law school with instructions on how to file complaints with the university’s Office for Dispute Resolution, lead to at least 48 students signing an online petition claiming to have filed complaints.

Harvard’s policies define gender-based harassment as “verbal, nonverbal, graphic, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostile conduct based on sex, sex-stereotyping, sexual orientation or gender identity.” Kellogg claimed that simply having Kavanaugh on campus, where he has taught a well-received course on the Supreme Court since 2008, would create a “hostile environment” violating students’ “right to our feeling of being safe.”

“If you had a meeting in Wasserstein, you don’t know if he’s going to be there,” fellow senior Julia Wiener added. “It would be pretty terrifying for any survivor or any person to walk into a building on campus and see someone who has been alleged of a very serious crime.”

Several Harvard Law professors specializing in Title IX law told the Crimson that they see the effort as misguided.

“Such an abuse of process would undermine the legitimacy and credibility of complaints that the Title IX process is intended to deal with, as well as of the Title IX office to focus on its duties,” Jeannie Suk Gersen said. “It might be effective in drawing further attention to some students’ objection to Kavanaugh’s teaching appointment, but I don’t expect him to be found to have violated Harvard University’s Sexual & Gender-Based Harassment Policy based on the currently known public allegations against him.”

But while the effort may not have had any legal potential, the intensity of student opposition may have pressured the judge into staying away just the same.

“Today, Judge Kavanaugh indicated that he can no longer commit to teaching his course in January Term 2019, so the course will not be offered,” Harvard Law’s Catherine Claypoole informed students Monday, USA Todayreports. The news follows a group of Harvard Law alumni claiming to have collected more than a thousand signatures claiming the allegations “should disqualify him from any position of esteem, including lectureships at HLS.”

Despite anti-Kavanaugh students’ assertion that the allegations “are credible and grave,” all three sets of claims lack corroborating evidence.

The FBI just completed a series of interviews concerning the allegations – the bureau’s seventh background check of Kavanaugh – with Democrat Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware admitting “there is nothing in here that is some bombshell that is unknown.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled a cloture vote and final vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination for Friday and Saturday, respectively. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona, moderates seen as holding Kavanaugh’s fate in their hands, hinted Thursday that they are satisfied with the FBI’s findings.

GENEVA, October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Pro-life governments around the world must lift their protections of pre-born babies in the name of “fundamental rights,” “gender equality,” and even saving lives, according to so-called “human rights experts” from the United Nations.

On September 28, the U.N. Human Rights Commission released a statement commemorating International Safe Abortion Day, by “experts” Ivana Radačić, Dainius Pūras, Dubravka Simonovic, and Agnes Callamard. It calls on “governments across the world to decriminalise abortion,” which it claims is “at the very core of her fundamental right to equality, privacy and physical and mental integrity,” and a “precondition for the enjoyment of other rights and freedoms.”

The statement claims that preventing mothers from having their pre-born babies killed or placing lesser restrictions on abortion “has a debilitating impact on women’s capacity to claim equal standing in all aspects of life,” and forces women to resort to illegal abortions that allegedly cause 47,000 deaths and 5 million cases of temporary or permanent disability every year. The statement does not acknowledge that every successful abortion, legal or illegal, results in the death of a whole, distinct, living human being.

The claim that pro-life laws don’t significantly reduce abortion rates but only make abortions more “dangerous” is a popular pro-abortion refrain, but not supported by the evidence. In the United States, former Planned Parenthood insiders have admitted to dramatically exaggerating the number of pre-legalization maternal deaths for political gain, while non-partisan fact checkers have acknowledged that medical advances such as new drugs were the real variable reducing maternal abortion deaths.

Similarly, Americans United for Life examined abortion in Latin America in 2012, and concluded that medical standards were once again the true cause of such deaths. The group’s report quoted the World Health Organization as acknowledging that “hospital structure” was the “most important variable” in determining maternal deaths.

The U.N. statement hints at forced subsidizing of abortion by highlighting the “obstacle” of “unaffordability,” declares that “conscientious objection [...] cannot be a basis for denying women access to abortion,” calls for the option to “use medical abortion in more private settings,” and says that governments must take action to “ensure” that women who have abortions are treated “without judgment.”

The declaration also recites a number of common pro-abortion talking points against pro-life motives and arguments. It says “legal frameworks for abortion have typically been designed to control women’s decision-making,” that the “idea that abortion is blameworthy” is nothing more than a “cultural construction,” and that the specter of “unsafe” illegal abortions proves that the very label “pro-life” is “misleading.”

“It was well established in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and upheld in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that international human rights are conferred to those who have been born,” the “experts” claim. “But some propagate a dangerous rhetoric that the rights of a pregnant woman and fetal interests must be equally protected. However, there is no such assertion in international human rights law.”

In 1947, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ original authors discussed proposed language that stated, “Everyone has the right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception regardless of his or her physical or mental condition.” But China and the Soviet Union, along with England, blocked the language. Regardless, long-settled biological criteria reflected in many mainstream scientific and medical textbooks establishes that pre-born children are living human beings.

“The experts [...] commend the efforts worldwide of women human rights defenders, who struggle every day, resisting discriminatory legacies supported by religious and cultural norms that embody harmful stereotypes of women’s roles in the family and society and are inherently discriminatory and oppressive to women,” the statement concludes. “No law should be misused as a means to control or curtail women's decision-making about the need for abortion, or access to it, and to punish women for that.”

The Trump administration has worked to oppose abortion on the international stage, from resisting pro-abortion agenda items at the U.N. to defunding foreign abortion groups. Ambassador Michael Kozak has affirmed that abortion is “not a human right” and that international contraception “access” is a non-issue, and USAID adviser Bethany Kozma has called for the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women to recognize abstinence education as a part of family planning.

‘LGBT’ should not be in Vatican documents: Archbishop Chaput tells Youth Synod

VATICAN CITY, October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia today told Pope Francis and members of the Synod of Bishops that “LGBTQ” and other similar language should not be used in the Vatican Youth Synod document.

In his intervention this morning on the floor of the Vatican’s Synod Hall (see full text below), Archbishop Chaput said: “There is no such thing as an ‘LGBTQ Catholic’ or a ‘transgender Catholic’ or a ‘heterosexual Catholic,’ as if our sexual appetites defined who we are; as if these designations described discrete communities of differing but equal integrity within the real ecclesial community, the body of Jesus Christ.”

“This has never been true in the life of the Church, and is not true now,” Chaput told the Pope, cardinals, bishops and young people convened in the Synod Hall. “It follows that ‘LGBTQ’ and similar language should not be used in Church documents, because using it suggests that these are real, autonomous groups, and the Church simply doesn’t categorize people that way.”

Archbishop Chaput’s remarks come just three days after Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, General Secretary for the Synod of Bishops, refused to remove the term “LGBT youth” from the synod’s working document (Instrumentum laboris).

At an Oct. 1 Vatican press conference, LifeSiteNews reminded Cardinal Baldisseri that he had initially claimed the phrase “LGBT youth” was a quote taken from a pre-synodal document compiled by young people at their meeting with the Pope and Synod organizers, March 19-24, 2018.

We told Baldisseri that we had looked at the final document compiled by young people, and the acronym “LGBT” appears nowhere.

“It’s not there?” Baldisseri replied. “No,” we said.

This correspondent therefore asked Cardinal Baldisseri if he would consider removing the phrase “LGBT youth” from the Instrumentum Laboris to avoid it being inserted into the final document, and becoming part of the Magisterium of the Church.

“Look, I am not removing anything,” Cardinal Baldisseri responded. “The Synod Fathers will discuss it article by article. All the texts, even the loftiest in the world, will be discussed.”

The passage in question, contained in paragraph 197 of the Instrumentum Laboris, reads:

Some LGBT youth, through various contributions that came to the Secretariat of the Synod, wish to “benefit from a greater closeness” and experience greater care on the part of the Church, while some ECs [Episcopal Conferences] ask what to propose “to young people who instead of forming a heterosexual couple decide to form a homosexual couple and, above all, wish to be close to the Church.”

Why should we use "LGBT" or "LGBTQ" in the church? Because people have a right to name themselves, and this is the name many choose. And there is such a "thing" as an "LGBTQ Catholic" and a "transgender catholic." They are members of the Body of Christ. https://t.co/7OWDayKUbk

I was elected to the synod’s permanent council three years ago. At the time, I was asked, along with other members, to suggest themes for this synod. My counsel then was to focus on Psalm 8. We all know the text: “When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?”

Who we are as creatures, what it means to be human, why we should imagine we have any special dignity at all – these are the chronic questions behind all our anxieties and conflicts. And the answer to all of them will not be found in ideologies or the social sciences, but only in the person of Jesus Christ, redeemer of man. Which of course means we need to understand, at the deepest level, why we need to be redeemed in the first place.

If we lack the confidence to preach Jesus Christ without hesitation or excuses to every generation, especially to the young, then the Church is just another purveyor of ethical pieties the world doesn’t need.

In this light, I read Chapter IV of the instrumentum, grafs 51-63, with keen interest. The chapter does a good job of describing the anthropological and cultural challenges facing our young people. In fact, describing today’s problems, and noting the need to accompany young people as they face those problems, are strengths of the instrumentum overall. But I believe graf 51 is misleading when it speaks of young people as the “watchmen and seismographs of every age.” This is false flattery, and it masks a loss of adult trust in the continuing beauty and power of the beliefs we have received.

In reality, young people are too often products of the age, shaped in part by the words, the love, the confidence, and the witness of their parents and teachers, but more profoundly today by a culture that is both deeply appealing and essentially atheist.

The elders of the faith community have the task of passing the truth of the Gospel from age to age, undamaged by compromise or deformation. Yet too often my generation of leaders, in our families and in the Church, has abdicated that responsibility out of a combination of ignorance, cowardice and laziness in forming young people to carry the faith into the future. Shaping young lives is hard work in the face of a hostile culture. The clergy sexual abuse crisis is precisely a result of the self-indulgence and confusion introduced into the Church in my lifetime, even among those tasked with teaching and leading. And minors – our young people – have paid the price for it.

Finally, what the Church holds to be true about human sexuality is not a stumbling block. It is the only real path to joy and wholeness. There is no such thing as an “LGBTQ Catholic” or a “transgender Catholic” or a “heterosexual Catholic,” as if our sexual appetites defined who we are; as if these designations described discrete communities of differing but equal integrity within the real ecclesial community, the body of Jesus Christ. This has never been true in the life of the Church, and is not true now. It follows that “LGBTQ” and similar language should not be used in Church documents, because using it suggests that these are real, autonomous groups, and the Church simply doesn’t categorize people that way.

Explaining why Catholic teaching about human sexuality is true, and why it’s ennobling and merciful, seems crucial to any discussion of anthropological issues. Yet it’s regrettably missing from this chapter and this document. I hope revisions by the Synod Fathers can address that.

OTTAWA, Ontario, October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to directly condemn a violent attack on a young pro-life woman by a pro-abortion advocate that happened in broad daylight during a pro-life event in Toronto on Sunday. A video of the attack has gone viral on social media.

Despite that video, self-avowed feminist Trudeau did not directly condemn the violence against the pro-lifer when contacted by LifeSiteNews Thursday morning.

Instead, a media request to the prime minister was handed off to the minister of public safety. That office then issued a generic statement: "We condemn all forms of violence."

Trudeau did not, however, refrain from condemning earlier this year an alleged anti-Muslim "hate crime" against a young girl that was supposed to have taken place in Toronto. An 11-year-old girl claimed that a man approached her with scissors in an attempt to cut off her hijab as she walked to school one morning. The story turned out to be fake news, but not before Trudeau lavished his support on the girl.

"My heart goes out to the young girl who was attacked, seemingly for her religion. I can't imagine how afraid she must have been," said Trudeau at that time. "I want her and her family and her friends and community to know that that is not what Canada is."

But with this attack against a pro-lifer in Toronto by a pro-abortion supporter, Ottawa has issued a statement devoid of any expression of support for the pro-life victim – or any specific condemnation of hatred and violence against pro-lifers.

All of Canada's main political leaders, in fact, have thus far refrained from commenting on the violence against a pro-life woman filmed during a peaceful Life Chain event.

In a video that has gone viral, the man now identified as Jordan Hunt roundhouse-kicks pro-life Marie-Claire Bissonnette on a Toronto street corner in broad daylight, hitting her in the shoulder and knocking her phone from her hands. According to Bissonnette, he then tore a pro-life ribbon from her jacket before running off.

Just prior to the attack, Hunt is seen talking and standing next to a woman holding a pro-abort sign that reads, "My body, my choice."

Hunt is seen in that video wearing around his neck on a chain an inverted pentagram, a symbol commonly associated with black magic and Baphomet, a pagan deity associated with Satan.

Immediately after the attack, Bissonnette struggles to regain her composure and asks for someone to call the police.

Hunt is heard in the video saying, "I meant to kick your phone!"

The prime minister's bias against the pro-life movement is well known.

Three years ago, Trudeau made it clear all Liberal cabinet ministers would have to vote against any pro-life bills proposing to put limits on abortion access in Canada. The prime minister has also stated all candidates for the federal Liberals will have to support abortion. This summer he refused to give grants to business owners hiring summer students unless they first signed an attestation in support of abortion.

Conservative Party of Canada Leader Andrew Scheer had also not responded by noon Thursday to a request for comment.

But the federal Conservatives, too, are against disrupting the status quo on abortion in Canada. The party's policy handbook states it will not support any legislation to regulate abortion.

Also contacted early Thursday morning for comment to denounce this violence against a pro-life woman were Toronto Mayor John Tory, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Ontario New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath. None of them had responded by midday.

In the Twitterverse, social conservatives and pro-lifers are calling for Hunt's arrest, some expressing contempt for the attack on a woman.

Identified earlier this week, Hunt has since lost his contract at a Toronto hair salon as a result of the attack.

Noble Studio 101 posted a statement on Instagram Wednesday that “it has been brought to our attention that Jordan Hunt has been caught on camera assaulting an innocent bystander at a pro-life rally. We don’t condone his actions and he has been let go."

CHILE, October 3, 2018 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Chilean prosecutors are currently investigating 126 Catholic clergy or members of religious orders accused of sexually preying on minors and adults, following an explosion of protests over Pope Francis’ support of a Chilean bishop accused of complicity in sex abuse in January of this year.

As is the case in the sex abuse crisis in the United States, Canada, and Europe, the vast majority of purported victims are adolescent and young adult males, adding further weight to the view that the crisis is not primarily one of pedophilia, but rather of homosexual male pederasty.

According to Chile’s national public prosecutor’s office, the Fiscalía Nacional, the number of investigations underway has increased dramatically in the last three months, with an additional 70 suspects added to the total. The total number of cases under investigation has now more than tripled since July.

According to the Chilean newspaperLa Tercera, the number of cases has swelled recently due to new discoveries of “dozens of files” of canonical cases regarding clerical sex abuse discovered in “key sites” of the dioceses of Rancagua and Santiago following raids conducted by police.

Chilean police have raided other diocesan facilities, including those of Valparaíso, Concepción, Osorno, and Chillán, in the last month, for a total of 16 offices raided in 2018.

La Tercera reports that the “principal” cases are directed against members of the country’s bishops’ conference who “would have had knowledge of abuses committed by prelates and which – they are investigating – would have silenced the victims to avoid going to the normal authorities and to [enable them to] relocate the accused.”

Prosecutors say that they have investigated a total of eight bishops since the year 2000. A large number of those are likely to be current cases.

Homosexual victimization of adolescents constitutes majority of cases

The breakdown by age and sex of reported victims indicates that the sex abuse crisis in Chile is principally one of male homosexual pederasty and predation rather than pedophilia.

According to the report, 63 percent of purported victims were 11-18 years of age, and 72 percent of victims were 11-25. A little over 22 percent of victims were under the age of 11. Out of the cases in which the sex of the victim was known (which was the case in 75 percent of sex abuse reports), 73 percent of the victims were males.

Also following the pattern in North America and Europe, the majority of accused perpetrators are middle-aged or elderly priests. Only 20 percent are under the age of 46.

Since 2000, prosecutors have investigated a total of 229 members of the Catholic Church for sex abuse, according to the same report. In 103 of those cases, the investigation has already come to an end. One hundred and twenty-six people continue to be investigated.

There have been a total of 272 reports of sexual abuse filed with prosecutors, and a total of 245 reported victims during that time.

Explosion of cases follows accusations of Pope Francis cover-up in January

The skyrocketing number of cases under investigation has followed an explosion of protests in January against Pope Francis over his role in the appointment of a Chilean bishop, Juan Barros. Barros is accused of complicity in crimes of sexual abuse committed by his ecclesiastical patron, Fernando Karadima. Victims of Karadima, who was prohibited from functioning publicly as a priest by Pope Benedict, say that Barros saw the abuse and did nothing.

Pope Francis for years insistently defended Barros, whom he moved to the diocese of Osorno in 2015, and dismissed accusations against the bishop as “calumny” and “slander.” He also claimed that he was open to hearing the testimony of victims but that they had never contacted him, a claim that was shown to be false when the Associated Press revealed in February that Cardinal Sean O’Malley had delivered a letter from a victim directly to Francis himself.

Following the protests and the revelation of his own falsehoods regarding Barros, Francis issued a muted apology and ordered a Vatican investigation of the Church in Chile. The investigation resulted in a report that indicated a large-scale problem of sex abuse cover-up and homosexuality in the clergy, and most of the 34 Chilean bishops submitted their resignations to Francis. The pope has since accepted seven of the resignations.

Pope Francis removed Karadima from the priesthood in late September, making him ineligible to say Mass or hear confessions, even in private, except in cases of danger of death. He also defrocked two other Chilean priests accused of sex abuse earlier this year: Jaime da Fonseca in August, and Cristián Precht Bañados in mid-September.

Scott Hahn: Don’t laicize sexual predators–excommunicate them

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Catholic apologist, author, and Franciscan University of Steubenville professor Scott Hahn has stated that clergy convicted of being sexual predators shouldn’t be defrocked, they should receive “excommunication.” He appeared to be referring to now ex-Cardinal McCarrick without mentioning him by name.

Hahn said to participants at the Napa Institute’s Authentic Catholic Reform Conference in Washington D.C. earlier this week that excommunication is a “hard medicine” that ultimately seeks the good of the one being punished. He also said that calls for the predatory ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick to be “reduced to the lay state” indicated contempt for the laity.

Hahn, whose lecture was titled “Universal Call to Holiness,” had just told his audience that lay people, no less than clergy, were called to be saints.

“What has brought this to my attention recently is a prelate, that we may all have read about, who was convicted, and then he was basically forced to resign from his cardinalate,” Hahn stated.

“And why? Because he was a predator. He was also a promoter of other predators,” he continued. “He was also a protector. And so what do they say? ‘He can no longer be a cardinal.’ And then people said, ‘That’s not enough’. So what should we do to punish him? ‘Defrock him!’” And what does that imply?”

“Reduce him down to the level of the laity,” he answered his own question. “Think about that. What does that imply? What do people think about laity? That if you’re a prelate, and a predator, and a promoter, and a protector, and you’re caught... Boom! You can’t be clergy; you have to be at the level of the laity!”

“So much for the universal call to holiness,” he exclaimed.

The former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was removed from public ministry this June after a credible allegation that he had molested an altar boy was made public. Other allegations of abuse of boys and young men followed. In July, after Catholic institutions scrambled to distance themselves from the once-powerful prelate, McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals. Then in August, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former papal nuncio to the USA, released a testimony alleging that Pope Francis, knowing of McCarrick’s unsavory reputation, made him "one of his principal agents in governing the Church."

Echoing an earlier lecture, Hahn pointed out that St. Paul prescribes the “hard medicine” of excommunication in his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 5:1-5). In this passage, Saint Paul condemns the sexual immorality of a member of the community and advises the community to banish the man:

“In the name of the Lord Jesus...you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that on the day of the Lord Jesus his soul may be saved.”

The point of excommunicating “this immoral man” is not “to get even” or even primarily “to purify the Church” but for “the man’s salvation,” Hahn said. He turned to the Second Letter to Corinthians (2 Cor 2: 1-9) to point to the “result of this excommunication.” The sincerely repentant sinner can now be welcomed back with joy, “for that was the whole point” of the punishment.

Hahn exhorted his hearers not to concentrate exclusively on clerical sins — "It’s easy for us to hate the sins of the clergy" — but also to develop a “holy contempt” for the sins they “commit the most, and enjoy the most, and rationalise the most because they’re the sins that will do the most damage”, not just to themselves, but to the Church and their families.

Nevertheless, the lecturer returned briefly to the subject of clerical sin to point out that although sex between clerics and consenting adults is not a crime, it’s a mortal sin.

“But even more than mortal sin, it was desecration,” Hahn stated. “It was profaning that supernatural fatherhood in a way that is spiritually incestuous as well as sodomit[ical].”

He said that it was “almost unbelievable” that people were confronting these sins and wondering if McCarrick should be merely stripped of the cardinalate or also laicized.

Hahn believes we have a crisis that eclipses the Reformation of 500 years ago and is more akin to the three scandalous reigns of Benedict IX, the first pope in history to be accused of sodomy, almost one thousand years ago.

Saying that the laity have to take the universal call to holiness seriously, Hahn encouraged them to take responsibility for changing those things they can change. But as well as investigating the clergy, lay people need to live a sacramental life.

Key to this is going to confession, constantly tending one’s marriage, and being a good parent. Hahn emphasised that being a good father, implies having a fatherly, rather than a motherly love, a love that accepts children for who they are but still encourages them to do better.

Quoting a professor from his student days, Hahn said that the culture would be transformed “if Catholics simply lived out the sacrament of matrimony.”

Note: Follow LifeSite's new Catholic twitter account to stay up to date on all Church-related news. Click here: @LSNCatholic

VATICAN CITY, October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Robert Sarah was elected last evening as a member of the Information Commission responsible for disseminating news on the Vatican Youth Synod, but has declined the position “for personal reasons,” it has emerged.

At a Vatican press briefing today, Bishop Fabio Fabene, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, told journalists that Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, did not specify what his motives were for declining the position, but only said that it was due to “personal reasons.”

Cardinal Sarah, of Guinea, is also the author of two acclaimed books: God or Nothing and The Power of Silence.

Fabene added that Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban, South Africa — who came in next in the vote tally — was made a member of the commission in Cardinal Sarah’s place.

Article 15 specifies further that: “Press conferences may be held on individual topics by the Synod Fathers appointed by the President of the Commission.”

The Instruction states that the commission is composed of: “the President and the Secretary, who are appointed by the Roman Pontiff, the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops [Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri]; the Undersecretary [Bishop Fabio Fabene]; the Special Secretary [Fr. Giacomo Costa, S.J.], the Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication [Mr. Paolo Ruffini], the Director of the Press Office [Mr. Greg Burke], “as well as five Members elected by the Assembly according to the Regulations of the Synod Assembly.”

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (LifeSiteNews) – Thomas More Society attorneys won a victory in court for several pro-life organizations in the City of St. Louis. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri has declared a city ordinance intended to make St. Louis a “Sanctuary City” for abortion to be unconstitutional and violates several Missouri state statutes, including the Missouri Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

In May 2017, the Thomas More Society sued the City of St. Louis for violating the rights of a home for pregnant women, a group of Catholic grade schools, and a for-profit holding company and its Catholic owner. St. Louis’s unconstitutional ordinance extended protected class status based on “reproductive health decisions,” requiring pro-life organizations to hire abortion proponents and rent to abortion clinics and required non-religious employers to cover or pay for abortions through their employee health plans.

Judge Audrey Fleissig found that the ordinance violated the First Amendment rights of Our Lady’s Inn and the Archdiocesan Elementary Schools of St. Louis by compelling the pregnant women’s home and the group of Catholic grade schools “to employ or house individuals who advocate for or perform abortions,” practices that are contrary to the missions of both organizations. On September 30, 2018, Fleissig issued a Memorandum and Order that, “the forced inclusion of individuals who do not share Our Lady’s Inn’s commitment against abortion would significantly affect the ability of Our Lady’s Inn to advocate for its services and encourage women to forgo abortion.”

Judge Fleissig similarly found the housing and employment provisions of the ordinance unconstitutional as applied to the Catholic archdiocese and its schools, noting that “[t]he forced inclusion of teachers or other staff who do not adhere to [their Catholic, pro-life] values would significantly affect the Archdiocesan Elementary Schools’ ability to advocate their viewpoints, through its teachers and staff, to their students.”

Additionally, Judge Fleissig found that the ordinance was unlawful as applied to Frank O’Brien, CEO of O’Brien Industrial Holdings, because it interfered with his “exercise of religion” under the Missouri Religious Freedom Restoration Act. She recognized that the ordinance “fails to exempt employers like the O’Brien plaintiffs from providing health care benefits covering abortion, contraception, or sterilization, in direct violation of the Missouri Act.”

Thomas More Society Special Counsel Sarah Pitlyk was satisfied with the ruling. “This law that claims to protect abortion supporters from discrimination is actually an attempt to suppress the viewpoint of those who believe that abortion is harmful or wrong by making it impossible for them to operate in accordance with their beliefs within the City of St. Louis,” Pitlyk explained. “We are especially pleased with the Court’s acknowledgement that there is no evidence whatsoever of the kind of discrimination that this ordinance purports to address, because it exposes the law for the sham that it is. It’s unfortunate that it took a lawsuit to vindicate the fundamental rights of St. Louis citizens, but the St. Louis Board of Aldermen has now been made aware that it is unconstitutional to require pro-life organizations to hire or rent property to abortion proponents, and that it is illegal to require pro-life employers to include abortion coverage in their employee health plans.”

Read the Memorandum and Order issued in Our Lady’s Inn et al. v. The City of St. Louis, by the United States District Court Eastern District of Missouri Eastern Division on September 30, 2018, by United States District Judge Audrey G. Fleissig here.

TORONTO, October 4, 2018 (The Bridgehead) – The video of abortion supporter Jordan Hunt roundhouse-kicking a peaceful pro-life woman earlier this week has gone viral, with millions watching videos of the assault on social media. When the video was first released, many of my colleagues at the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform noted that Hunt looked very familiar. When they reviewed footage of an assault on one of our young female interns earlier this summer during a pro-life demonstration in Toronto, we discovered why: Jordan Hunt was the attacker. It turns out that his assault earlier this week is not the first time he has attacked a pro-life female for expressing her views in public.

Several witnesses, as well as the female intern who was attacked by Hunt, have confirmed his identity and the police have been notified. The video below shows both the assault, as well as a verbal confrontation with another pro-life intern afterwards:

The pro-lifer assaulted by Jordan Hunt was participating in the pro-life summer internship that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has attacked several times in relation to the Canada Summer Jobs Program (many pro-lifers have stepped up to support these interns after the Liberal attacks—if you wish to do so, you can do that here.) Contrary to the false narrative promoted by politicians and the media, it is not pro-lifers who engage in harassment—rather, they are regularly the targets of it. Despite this opposition, CCBR’s summer internships results each year in countless minds being changed on abortion.

More footage of the violence perpetrated regularly by abortion supporters will be released in the coming days.

October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The video of a bearded man roundhouse kicking a young pro-life woman at Life Chain has spread across the Internet like wildfire, helped along by retweets from dozens of outraged journalists and commentators—including Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. The man was identified as one Jordan Hunt in short order, and he has now been fired from his job and is the subject of a police investigation.

I’ve seen a lot of shock on social media over the deliberate, calculated violence by an abortion supporter directed at a peaceful pro-lifer. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not. The sad fact is that violence by abortion supporters against pro-lifers has been the norm for years. And when I say it has become the norm, I mean that there have been well over a dozen documented assaults on pro-lifers this year alone, and Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has engaged in overt victim-blaming by claiming that those who carry pro-life signs “provoke” people to assault them. Pro-life women who get assaulted? They had it coming, shrug the abortion activists.

And when I say that pro-life people are being assaulted, I don’t just mean people throwing drinks at us—although that happens, too. I mean girls getting shoved. I mean an abortion advocate repeatedly hitting a pro-life activist with a cane. I mean pro-lifers getting threatened with sexual assault, baseball bats, and even knives. A few years ago, in fact, a pro-life woman was hospitalized after being attacked by a knife-wielding abortion advocate at Life Chain in Toronto—the same event that Jordan Hunt attacked earlier this week. Most pro-lifers could tell you personal stories about violence from abortion activists.

In a show of profound cowardice and hypocrisy, it is often the young female activists that are attacked—my sister has a restraining order against a man who showed up at one of our displays on his Harley, grabbed one of our cameras, and threatened violence. One of my female friends in Toronto was punched by a middle-aged man simply for sidewalk-chalking pro-life messages. Verbal abuse—ranging from the “c-word” to insults so vile I will not repeat them here—are so commonplace that many of us don’t notice them anymore.

Simply put, this is something we have come to expect from abortion supporters. If you do pro-life work, it comes with the territory.

In many ways this is not surprising. Violence is fundamental to the abortion worldview—abortion is essentially responding with violence to the presence of an inconvenient human being. That is precisely how many abortion supporters respond to the pro-lifers advocating for those helpless pre-born children, as well. The reason they so often get away with it is because they have the media and the politicians covering for them with ridiculous and blatantly false narratives about pro-lifers harassing women—although they rarely manage to produce a single example of this. If pro-abortion protesters experienced what frontline pro-life activists go through in a single week, it would be nonstop headline news on every major network, with politicians promising to take swift and immediate action.

I’m glad that Jordan Hunt managed to single-handedly draw so much attention to the mindset of people like him—that violence is justified when people are inconvenient. He is not the only one. In fact, he is not the only one who has assaulted a pro-life activist in Toronto in the past month. Pro-lifers face people like him on the street regularly in order to speak for the pre-born babies who are killed by abortion every single day.

It is because we get to see babies get saved and hearts get changed that people like him will never stop us from doing our work.

‘LGBT’ appears for the first time in a Vatican document. Catholics should grieve

October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – As reported here by our Rome correspondent, the working document for the Youth Synod underway at the Vatican contains the first use, in an official Vatican document, of the acronym “LGBT.” Why is this a big deal?

The term “LGBT” was coined by secular activists to describe what they consider to be a range of acceptable sexual orientations or lifestyle preferences: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. The slang use of “gay” is already something that no one should buy into, since the shattered lives and angry advocacy of homosexuals is manifestly contrary to the original positive meaning of the word.

More broadly, to say or write “LGBT” in a way that seems intended as a description that accurately represents reality is to embrace the ideology behind it, the construction of a universe other than the one God created. It is one thing to mention the acronym in order to critique it, but to mention it neutrally or positively is already to admit its false premises.

In his letter to the Ephesians (5:3–4), St. Paul enunciates a principle about Christian discourse, whether in writing or in speech: “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not so much as be named among you, as becometh saints; nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.” Or, as the Amplified Bible translates and comments: “But immorality (sexual vice) and all impurity (of lustful, rich, wasteful living) or greediness must not even be named among you, as is fitting and proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness (obscenity, indecency) nor foolish and sinful (silly and corrupt) talk, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting or becoming; but instead voice your thankfulness [to God].”

In other words, Christians are not even supposed to talk about foul and disgusting things unless they are forced to do so for the sake of refuting error and defending the truth. This is the reason why Christians are also morally required not to watch TV shows or movies that display sexually immoral acts: if such things shouldn’t even be mentioned among those who are called to be saints, what would St. Paul say about watching them and taking them into our imaginations and memories?

Thus, we see that in the Bible, as well as in Church documents, immorality is dealt with either by circumlocution or in discreet and modest ways. If the Church is going to talk about psychological diseases and sins, she is obliged to use accurate terminology already given to her within the Christian tradition, accompanied by correct judgments about their degree of sinfulness and the harm they cause. Therefore, no document that claims to express the mind of the Church or of her pastors may talk about sexual disorders in a neutral, sociological manner, let alone with seeming tolerance, approval, or encouragement.

In the neutral, sociological use of “LGBT” by the Synod organizers, we can see what Steve Skojec has described as a process of “moving the needle” on normalcy. Fifty years ago, homosexuality was barely mentioned except in thick tomes of moral theology. It was one of those things that Christians didn’t talk about, as per St. Paul’s recommendation. As the decades wore on and the secular culture gradually “destigmatized” homosexual behavior, we saw it mentioned in Church documents, albeit always with clear condemnation. In recent decades, vague and misleading psychobabble about homosexual, bisexual, or transgender “inclinations” has crept into the discourse, muddying the waters still further.

Pope Francis catapulted the process to the next level with his infamous “Who am I to judge?” remark.

And now the Youth Synod, which was organized by and is being driven by a small faction of ultraprogressive ultramontanists, has moved the needle further by its premeditated adoption of the anti-Catholic (actually, anti-human nature) concept of “LGBT.”

For Catholics who follow the patent teaching of Scripture that God created human beings as male and female only, two sexes ordered to one another only, and that any kind of sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman is foreign to virtue, personal happiness, and the good of society, the appearance of the ideologically loaded “LGBT” in a Vatican document is a moment of dishonor before God and the world.

We do not yet know where the discussions at this Synod will go, but we have every indication, in small details as in larger ones, that it has been rigged from the start, just as the Synods on the Family were rigged. The final document—which, thanks to a move by Pope Francis, may now be rapidly rubber-stamped as “magisterial”—is likely to be either bad or weak. Neither outcome is worthy of Christ or of His immaculate Bride.

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